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Decision Theory and the Irrelevance of Impossible Outcomes

by David Althaus
28th Jan 2017
1 min read
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This is a linkpost for https://casparoesterheld.com/2017/01/17/decision-theory-and-the-irrelevance-of-impossible-outcomes/
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Decision Theory and the Irrelevance of Impossible Outcomes
2Oscar_Cunningham
2cousin_it
0Stuart_Armstrong
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[-]Oscar_Cunningham9y20

It might be important that "impossible" depends on your state of knowledge. For example in counterfactual mugging getting the large reward doesn't become impossible until after you know the result of the coin flip. So you should perhaps more carefully state your principal as "impossible at the time that the agent make the decision".

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[-]cousin_it9y20

Is there an argument why IIO should overrule reflective consistency in Counterfactual Mugging?

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[-]Stuart_Armstrong9y00

In this post http://lesswrong.com/lw/f37/naive_tdt_bayes_nets_and_counterfactual_mugging/ I argued, as an aside, for another principle: that it shouldn't matter whether you were being simulated or whether anyone was simply predicting the result of that simulation.

Then (very roughly) CDT behaves as EDT/UDT if you assume that Newcomb is simulating you, because you can't tell whether you're the simulation or the "real" you. But this argument also argues for the counterfactual mugging, unlike yours.

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